Trump spent the weekend lying. Biden prepped. Thursday's debate will be interesting.

PHILADELPHIA — President Joe Biden and the man he defeated in 2020, Donald Trump, spent the weekend very differently. We’ll know Thursday when they face each other in their first 2024 presidential debate which one made the most of their time.

Biden was sequestered at Camp David in the Catoctin Mountains of Maryland, using the remote presidential retreat to study up with aides, likely prepping on policy and polishing zingers for Trump.

Trump was where he seems most comfortable, speaking on stage to crowds of supporters. He stopped first on Saturday at a Faith & Freedom Coalition conference in Washington, D.C., where he took credit for appointing the justices who overturned constitutional protections for abortion.

He followed that with an evening campaign rally in Philadelphia, a city where Democrats outnumber Republicans 7 to 1 and the 2020 vote tally tilted Pennsylvania – and the presidency – to Biden.

It was – mostly – a typical Trump rally with plenty of half-truths and outright lies. What stood out to me while standing in an arena that could barely be called half-full was that Trump's material now feels so dated.

It's like he showed up for Season 15 of his old "reality television" show, "The Apprentice," with the script from Season One.

Trump asks supporters if he should be mean to Biden

The only new stuff on Trump's mind Saturday was the debate. He tried mocking Biden for focusing on preparation, claiming the president was really sleeping in a "log cabin" and would need drugs to be alert on Thursday.

He tried polling the crowd on whether he should call Biden "Crooked Joe" or "Sleepy Joe." The crowd clearly preferred "Sleepy Joe," but Trump didn't seem to care.

He also asked the crowd if he should be "tough and nasty" toward Biden during the debate or "be nice and calm and let him speak."

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Trump must know reports are already circulating about how he and his campaign concede that he interrupted Biden too much during the first debate in 2020, handing his challenger a convincing victory as coverage focused on Trump's inability to control himself.

Trump, being Trump, looks likely to be the same guy in 2024 as he was in 2020. Changing his approach to the debate would acknowledge that he lost four years ago. His ego won't allow it.

Trump, of course, attacked everything about presidential debate

Trump's real mission Saturday was to lower expectations, especially if he flops again while facing Biden. He approached this by attacking the debate sponsor, CNN, the format, and the moderators.

"They gave me something that couldn't be accepted," Trump said. "They gave me an offer I couldn't accept and I said I'll do it."

Trump, known to feed off a crowd's energy, is unhappy that the debate will be in a closed studio with no audience, which he described as "like death."

He also claimed CNN and the anchors who will moderate, Jake Tapper and Dana Bash, "really hate Trump."

We watched Trump road test his excuses if Thursday doesn't go his way. The crowd loved it. There will be no crowd Thursday.

At this point, we know the lies Trump will tell

Trump's speech in Philadelphia leaned hard into familiar bombast – criticism for Biden about inflation and immigration, foreign affairs and education. He lied about the 2020 election being "rigged" in Biden's favor.

He also stuck to his standard victimization stance, claiming his four criminal cases are all Biden's fault. He suggested more than once, without context, that he would prevent "World War III." And there were the weird asides – complaints about water pressure in toilets and dishwashers.

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But what Trump, now a convicted felon, really wanted to talk about was crime. He spent plenty of time suggesting that any child out for a bike ride was just as likely to vanish as come home and you have a "50/50 chance" of being killed "if you walk down certain streets."

In the real world, the FBI's most recent data shows crime rates dropping. Trump knows that, so he called the FBI statistics "fake" during his Philadelphia speech.

And, in a diverse city, Trump fell back to his 2016 pitch to Black voters, again asking what they have to lose in supporting him over Biden.

One problem there – Trump's campaign intentionally placed some Black supporters behind his podium to get them in the shot for television cameras. But the crowd he spoke to was overwhelmingly white. Trump, in his speech, noted that some groups in the audience were not from Philadelphia but traveled to each of his rallies.

How Biden is getting ready for presidential debate

While Biden studies up, his campaign is planning a full-court press this week, according to a memo reported first on Sunday by NBC News, describing 1,600 events with Biden surrogates between now and Thursday along with new television and digital ads.

Much of that will connect Trump to the overturning of abortion rights while also highlighting his criminal conviction.

North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, a top contender as Trump's vice presidential candidate, was clearly tasked with helping the former president lower expectations for the debate. Burgum praised Biden in a CNN interview Sunday, citing 2020 debates and this year's State of the Union address.

"When he needs to, he can step up," Burgum said of Biden.

We'll find out Thursday if the president can do it again.

Weekend a perfect lead-up to first 2024 presidential debate

Nothing provokes the fury of Trump supporters like suggesting he isn't the draw that he sees himself as, like the responses showed when I posted pictures of empty seats Saturday on the social media site formerly known as Twitter.

But anyone in the Liacouras Center, where the Temple University Owls play basketball, can tell you they had plenty of room to spread out. The arena seats 10,000. It was, at best, half filled. And the line to get in trickled away well before Trump hit the stage.

I wondered why Trump invested crucial campaign time and resources in a city where his support has always been on the margins.

The arena's digital signs flashed “PHILADELPHIA IS TRUMP COUNTRY.” The crowd size said something very different.

Still, Trump was clearly comfortable with his surroundings, trotting out old speech lines, relying on supporters to cheer for him even though they've heard it all before.

That still works for Trump in rallies, but Thursday will be a whole different thing. If he shows up with a well-worn playbook, there's a good chance Biden will score another first-debate win.

Follow USA TODAY elections columnist Chris Brennan on X, formerly known as Twitter: @ByChrisBrennan